Musique d'art (2023)

With Musique d’art (2023), I wanted to take advantage of the experience I have gained over the last few years in the field of natural harmony and simply have fun reaping the benefits.

I first asked myself what musical training would best meet my needs in general. I chose an ensemble of seven musicians, with a base, the double bass, on which are based three desks, that is to say pairs of musicians whose score is almost identical. This formation makes it possible to create four-voice harmonies with unison doublings on the three desks, which gives volume to the sound of the strings. The unisons between two voices can shift slightly in time and create diffraction effects, up to seven-part harmonies at times.

Then I identified the materials that would be best performed by the chosen instruments and limited myself to them: harmonies anchored to the open strings, linked by simple tonal relationships, which is reflected in the readability of the score. In the same vein, the presence of a conductor maximizes the potential for precision in the interpretation.

Finally, I poured the material into the instrument like fuel into a new high-performance car: with only a few days to go before the first rehearsals, I had rarely been so excited at the idea of hearing my music start for the first time!

Simon Martin